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I bought an iPod touch 32 GB in September. This is my first Apple product ever and so far I'm very very satisfied. The ipod touch (and iphone) excels in the vast majority of features in its category but still has some issues. I'm going to discuss the very good points and its one single main issue.

I agree with the apple fans I know, it's so slick in many sens; the UI is very advanced for a so small and thin device, and the features are very good (some are better than others though). Talking about thickness, how can they manage to fit a powerful CPU and GPU (I have the OpenGL ES 2 model) in a so thin device?

The performance? It's always highly responsive; any application I open always comes up immediately. Browsing the web is fast for its device category and games load  very fast too. I didn't have the chance to compare the performance with the previous generation though.

Games can now take advantage of OpenGL ES if your device supports it. I didn't play games developed for OGL ES yet so I can't comment here.

The iPhone/iPod touch is a high tech device right? The screen is big and the resolution is rather high for the screen size. But the greatest feature among all is the app store; it has literally tons of apps and games! Of course not all of them are great but this isn't worse than on the other platforms. I still remember when I watched that Apple conference on the web when Steve Jobs announced the app store. That was huge not only for apps BUT also for gaming! It opened an all new and distinct game market. EA demoed a space shooter where you could control the ship by moving the screen. And latter Sega demoed their Monkey Ball game with the same control scheme. This way of playing a game was rather new at that time for a small device.

All these things are great for gaming, but there is one issue here: the controls. Surprised? I'll explained you why. Let's start with games that you control by moving the screen. Sure this control scheme is intuitive, but in some games I don't want the screen to move constantly for the sake of control; sometimes it makes the game more difficult because the player's orientation sense changes due to the screen moving frequently and sometimes quickly. This is especially true for racing games (Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D, for instance). But for slow pace games like Super Monkey Ball it's much less an issue because the screen moves much slower.

The iPhone/iPod touch wasn't originally designed for gaming and for this reason it doesn't always offer the best control scheme concerning buttons. A lot of games need buttons to control the main character or vehicle for instance. The iphone/ipod offers only touch and screen move controls. Game designers are forced to use virtual buttons via the screen. For me there are 3 issues with that. Personally for some types of games I find it more difficult the fact that I don't feel the button (AstroRaider or 3D Brick Breaker, for instance); I need the physical contact to make sure I'm pushing in the right direction. Second, touching the screen sometimes hides some gameplay aspects. If I want my ship to move left or right but my finger hides an enemy ship that is close to that button then my ship might get damaged (Galaga REMIX, for instance). Third, touching the screen will never be as fast as a real button. This is a rather minor issue but could problematic if the touch response isn't fast enough due to fast action. A button smashing game could have the same issue.

Having exposed all these control issues I'm not saying that there's no good game in the app store. For sure there are a lot of great games (Dungeon Explorer, Bejeweled 2, StoneLoops, Arkanoid and Crash Bandicoot Nitro to name a few). It's just that for me the iphone/ipod touch isn't the best portable game console. In my opinion the best portable console is the Nintendo DS because of it's combination of touch screen with stylus and buttons. This is a great balance between touch and classic controls.

The control issues I've discussed are based on my experience so far and on my play style, habits, tastes, etc. I'm sure you or other players have different opinions. What do you think about what I've discussed.